Fall2016agenda

History Task Force Agenda
History Department Fall Meeting
August 25, 2016
HBC 411 at 7:00 p.m.

1. The History Department welcomed its new members: Bill Britcher, Aaron Fichera, Kate Meyers, and Storm Miller.

2. The usual announcements concerning checking rosters, turning in fall syllabi, watching for ADA & SHT compliance dates, and entering last date of attendance on the final grade sheet for students earning a “F” in classes.

3. This semester all students certified as “Never Attended” will automatically be withdrawn from the course and will NOT appear on the final grade sheet.

4. The deadline date for grade submittal for fall 2016 is Tuesday, December 20th, 2016, rather than 24 hours later as is normal. This is caused by the Christmas vacation calendar.

5. Official Reporting Dates for Fall Roster Certification (Attended/Never Attended) are as follows:

16 week courses: Sept. 14 12 week courses: Oct. 6

1st 8 week courses: Sept. 6 2nd 8 week courses: Oct. 31

5 week courses: Sept. 1

6. The Emeritus Professors Lecture will be Oct. 15th in EVC 8500 at 9:00am

7. Constitution Day is Sept. 27, 2016 at Palmer Events Center at 5:30pm

8. Adjunct Faculty Evaluation information will be sent by email to all adjunct faculty members

9. The Provost, Dr. Charles Cook, and the S&BS Dean, Dr. Gaye Lynn Scott, made a presentation and answered questions concerning ACC’s participation in the Lumina OER Grant process. The questions and answers previously submitted are found at the end of the Minutes. Provided a satisfactory OER is produced and adopted by the History Department, we will pilot the HIST 1302 OER in the spring 2017 semester and the HIST 1301 ORS in the summer 2017 session. If additional work needs to be completed before adoption, we will pilot the HIST 1302 OER in fall 2017 and HIST 1301 OER in the spring of 2018.

10.The meeting adjourned.

OER Degree Initiative Questions from the History Department, August 2016


1. Do I have to use OER if I prefer using a textbook?

No. We are excited by the possibilities of this grant, including the opportunity to move away from proprietary publishing control over course materials that we use. Nonetheless faculty may decide that they prefer the proprietary textbook rather than the OER course materials. We must acknowledge the likelihood, however, that over time, student demand for OER courses will grow. We will only respond with OER courses that are proven by the department/program faculty to result in the same or higher student learning outcomes (SLO) as well as persistence rates, and that reflect the same (or better) quality of course material to support student learning as current textbooks.

2. If I try OER and decide it doesn’t work with my teaching style, can I drop it the next semester and go back to a regular textbook?

Yes. We see the availability of OER courses as opening the door to greater faculty control over their teaching, since the materials can be adapted to an individual faculty member’s needs. We also see an opportunity for faculty to gain additional authority over their teaching style because they are not locked into a publisher’s textbook. However, we know that not all faculty members will like the adaptability of OER course materials. We invite faculty to take advantage of professional development opportunities where possible to learn more about the development and use of OER.

3. If I would like to try to use OER, must I use the one developed in this process or may I change it to meet my needs?

The fundamental tenet of the OER Degree Initiative grant is that the OER developed for any course under the grant will be CC BY licensed (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). CC BY licensing means that the course materials can be adapted, remixed, rearranged, or embellished as the faculty member chooses – as long as attribution is given to the course developer. That is the beauty of CC BY OER courses– they are malleable to allow for maximum creativity and timeliness of content as the faculty member chooses.

4. May I develop my own OER using material of my own choice?

Yes. Development is different than adoption or adaptation. Development of OER materials from scratch to meet the Creative Commons licensing expectations is a large undertaking. We encourage faculty to explore OER courses that are already developed (whether on Lumen Learning’s platform, Open Stax, Merlot.org, or elsewhere) and then adapt those materials to meet their needs. In this sense, development would mean to add, change, rearrange, delete, or expand on sections of a course that has already been developed with OER materials.

5. Do I have to use only the “approved” OER material from Lumen or can I use other “non-approved” material of my own choosing?

Our partners in this grant include Lumen Learning (http://lumenlearning.com/). Lumen Learning has a course catalog of publicly licensed (CC BY) courses. (Please note that the Lumina Foundation is not involved in this grant. Our partner is Lumen Learning. There seems to be some conflation of these two distinct entities.) The grant asks that courses developed or adapted for the OER Degree Initiative go through a licensing review by Lumen Learning to ensure that every element of the course is CC BY licensed.

While faculty developers under the grant are generally likely to start with a Lumen Learning course, that does not mean that the materials won’t be adapted, rearranged, added to, or remixed to meet the needs of our students and the learning outcomes established for the course.

Further, the benefits of OER serve both faculty and student needs. For faculty, a CC BY licensed course can be altered to suit the faculty member’s particular needs and approaches to the subject matter. In addition, faculty can engage students in the ongoing creation of course materials – for instance, an assignment could ask students to search for publicly licensed examples of a particular phenomenon or concept. For students, course materials that are CC BY licensed are available on the first day of class. They are accessible in multiple formats (electronic, print on demand). They are timely and often interactive. And they are inexpensive or free.

6. If I decide not to use OER but the ECS high school where I have taught for years decides they want to use it for financial reasons, will I be prohibited from continuing to teach there? What about my selection rights with e-staffing?

The type of course scheduled and its appropriate staffing must serve institutional and student needs first and foremost. To every extent possible beyond that, ACC also strives to serve the needs of its faculty, both full-time as well as adjunct, in obtaining a schedule that is most convenient to their needs and conducive to excellent teaching and learning environments. In addition, please remember that the Administrative Rules related to adjunct staffing allow for flexibility in the staffing of dual credit sections in order to best serve the needs of the institution and the dual credit students. (Please see AR 4.06.002.)

The high school districts must, by law, provide all textbooks for ECHS students. To date our local early college high school partners have spent between $80,000 and $100,000 on textbooks for dual credit classes. Over time, as proven OER courses are available, it is conceivable that districts would indeed ask for them over non-OER courses. ACC faculty members control the content of the OER courses to ensure that they facilitate all ACC faculty-prescribed learning outcomes. To ensure the greatest flexibility for both adjuncts and department chairs in terms of eStaffing assignments, it would seem to be incumbent upon the faculty members to gain training in OER, distance learning, hybrid instruction, and all forms of course delivery that ACC offers.

7. Will I be kept from teaching a certain section just because I don’t use OER? What about the concept of academic freedom?

Freedom of inquiry, freedom to teach course content, freedom to communicate sometimes difficult or controversial ideas – none of this is threatened by the development and use of open educational resources.

As a research partner in the OER Degree Initiative grant, we have agreed to help ensure that 300 students receive a “dosage” of four OER-based courses in the next year and a half. The quasi-experimental research design is available upon request. We hope to concentrate our OER sections at regional campuses (HLC, RRC, RVS) for the research study. In addition, we hope to develop a coherent schedule at each of those campuses that makes it more likely that students who have declared General Studies as their program will take four or more classes that are OER based. Some of these efforts may impact a faculty member’s preference for a particular class at a particular time. We see the OER Degree Initiative grant as a springboard for the development of additional OER courses and for the expansion of the number of faculty who teach OER courses.

The development of the course schedule is something that will be done more thoughtfully and intentionally, separate and apart from any conversation about OERs. Too often our course schedules “roll” from one semester to the next, with a few changes made around the edges. As a college we need to have serious conversations about how we craft our course schedule so as to best meet the needs of our students.

We intend to explore additional software to assist us in the analysis and execution of course schedules that serve our students’ needs. We receive many complaints from students who have to travel to multiple campuses at odd times to complete a schedule. We will be working with Deans and Department Chairs over the next year to design and create block-scheduled programs, week-end programs, fully online programs, and competency-based programs.

8. Will certain sections be reserved just for OER use?

Yes.

9. How will OER work with e-staffing?

As explained in response to question 6 above, course scheduling and staffing must serve institutional and students’ needs first and foremost. However, every effort will be made to continue use of a system that recognizes faculty status, service, and performance in shaping their own teaching schedule.

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